LG is said to be planning to introduce a smartphone based on an in-house System-on-Chip (SoC).

LG’s SoC plans have been a subject of speculation for more than a year now, but so far the company has little to show for its efforts. LG’s first SoC, codenamed Odin, was leaked a number of times over the past year.

It remains unclear whether the upcoming phone is indeed based on an Odin derivative or an entirely new chip. The Odin was designed a high-end chip in ARM’s big.LITTLE configuration, with four Cortex A15 and four Cortex A7 CPU cores and Rogue graphics. A year later that sort of spec does not make much sense, especially not in 28nm, as there are already numerous SoCs with similar specs on the market.

The new phone is said to be a 5.9-inch device and it could appear as early as next month. Although the size of the screen points to a phablet, that does not mean it is a high-end device. According to Korean business publication Money Today, there is speculation that the phone could be part of LG’s G series or that it could be part of an entirely new product line.

Cheap, oversized phones are quite popular in some emerging markets, so the size alone does not tell us enough. LG’s first SoC could be a design with flagship aspirations like the Odin, or it could be an unspectacular design for mid range and entry level devices.

Rumours of an in-house LG SoC have been circulating for a while. The Odin SoC is said to be a high-end big.LITTLE octa-core design, but there is also talk of a cheaper quad-core version.

Not much is known about the actual spec, but the flagship part is expected to feature four Cortex A15 cores backed by four Cortex A7 cores and Mali-T760 graphics. TSMC is supposed to manufacture the chip, or chips in 28nm. However, the Odin parts will not be ready in time for the LG G3, which is apparently based on a quad-core Snapdragon part from Qualcomm. According to ET News, the LG G3 will not feature in-house parts at all.

LG’s Odin sounds quite a bit like Samsung’s latest Exynos 5 parts, but like Samsung LG apparently won’t use it in its flagship phone. Samsung’s Galaxy S5 is powered by a Qualcomm chip, too. However, there is also an Exynos version. The only problem is that the Exynos version simply won’t come to major markets. At this point it is starting to look like the Exynos based Galaxy S5 will only appear in South Korea and maybe a few regional markets, but not in the US or EU.

Although we are still far away from the launch of the Optimus G II rumored for next fall, Korea Times reports that LG is already working on an octa-core chipset called Odin that should be a main part of the next-gen Optimus G.

It is, of course, a logical move and LG will probably follow the footsteps of Samsung and Huawei by making its own in-house chipset. LG apparently already plans to outsource the manufacturing to TSMC and might end up to be quite similar to Samsung's big.LITTLE architecture by combining four low-power Cortex-A7 cores with four Cortex-A15 cores.

The Odin is apparently heading for smartphones but might be easily used for future tablets as well, a part of the market that LG has not been focusing on.